Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion is deny­ing claims by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh that it has en­dorsed the use of the Pfiz­er pae­di­atric COVID-19 vac­cines for chil­dren 5 to 11 years.

Deyals­ingh made the claim on Sun­day dur­ing the reded­i­ca­tion of the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

How­ev­er, the Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion’s PRO, Dr Frank Ram­lakchans­ingh, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has not yet de­cid­ed to ful­ly en­dorse it.

“We did not make any state­ment say­ing we’re in favour of the vac­cine for the 5 to 11 years old,” he said.

“Nei­ther did we say we’re against it, but we did not say we en­dorsed it. This seems to be what he seems to be putting out.”

Dr Ram­lack­hans­ingh said the as­so­ci­a­tion is cur­rent­ly de­lib­er­at­ing its stance on the vac­cine and a fi­nal word is ex­pect­ed by the week­end.

“One of our lead­ing pae­di­a­tri­cians is look­ing in­to this mat­ter right now. She’s try­ing to gath­er da­ta and present the facts to the mem­ber­ship,” he said.

How­ev­er, he does not be­lieve the or­gan­i­sa­tion will give a broad en­dorse­ment of the vac­cine.

“There’s a mid­dle road here in the sense that I don’t think we’ll come out and for or against the vac­cine as such. There’s cer­tain cir­cum­stances where chil­dren def­i­nite­ly should get the vac­cine,” he said.

Still, he said chil­dren liv­ing with peo­ple at a high risk of an ad­verse out­come from COVID-19, or who are them­selves with­in that group, should get it.

He clar­i­fied that “vac­cines are of ben­e­fit.”

“Look what it’s done for po­lio, small­pox, measles, mumps, rubel­la, et cetera,” he said.

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